Links

Search and Rescue

Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M Universityhttp://crasar.org/
CRASAR’s mission is to improve disaster preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery through the development and adoption of robots and related technologies. Its goal is to create a “community of practice” for rescue robots that motivates fundamental research, supports technology transfer, and educates students, response professionals, and the public.It makes a wide range of small land, sea, and air robots available for use by responders at no charge through the Roboticists Without Borders program and it helps organize and sponsor conferences such as the annual IEEE Safety Security Rescue Robotics conference and workshops such as the recent NSF-JST-NIST Workshop on Rescue Robots.

Darius Projecthttp://www.darius-fp7.eu/
Submitted under the 4th Security Call of the EC’s 7th Framework Programme, DARIUS (Deployable SAR Integrated Chain with Unmanned Systems) aims at providing unmanned platforms for search and rescue operations. While everaging the results of these previous or on-going projects. DARIUS will put effort on the aspects that have not or little been covered for the use of the unmanned systems in SAR operations, namely to enhance the interoperability performances at procedural and technical levels.

European Robotics Press Centerhttp://www.robotics-presscenter.eu/cms/index.php
The new online press portal and PR platform for European Robotics: The press center is the main portal for European Robotics related PR and news material. It is a user-friendly and valuable tool for robotics enthusiasts and media professionals, especially journalists, who are looking for robotics related information within your area of expertise.

Geo-pictureshttp://www.geo-pictures.eu/
GEO-PICTURES is the Satellite & Space initiative that saves lives, environment and infrastructures during emergencies and disasters. A powerful service portal, we create integrated space solutions, technology, infrastructure and procedures, that explore advantages of rapid & robust integration of visual in-situ & space observations.
Led by AnsuR in Norway, with users such as United Nations, EU Civil Protection and the Government of Amazonas, FP7 GEO-PICTURES is unique, and more than a technology project.GEO-PICTURES offers a new dimension in emergency management.

INACHUShttp://www.inachus.eu/
INACHUS is a European 7th Framework project funded under the SEC programme (grant agreement no. 607522). The INACHUS project aims to achieve a significant time reduction related to Urban Search and Rescue (USaR) phase by providing wide-area situation awareness solutions for improved detection and localisation of the trapped victims assisted by simulation tools for predicting structural failures and a holistic decision support mechanism incorporating operational procedures and resources of relevant actors.

International Search and Rescue Advisory Grouphttp://insarag.org/
INSARAG is a global network of more than 80 countries and organisations under the United Nations umbrella. INSARAG deals with urban search and rescue (USAR) related issues, aiming to establish minimum international standards for USAR teams and methodology for international coordination in earthquake response based on the INSARAG Guidelines endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 57/150 of 2002, on “Strengthening the Effectiveness and Coordination of International Urban Search and Rescue Assistance”.

NIFTihttp://www.nifti.eu/
NIFTi is about human-robot cooperation. About teams of robots and humans doing tasks together, interacting together to try and reach a shared goal. NIFTi looks at how the robot could bear the human in mind. Literally. When determining what to do or say next in human-robot interaction; when, and how. NIFTi puts the human factor into cognitive robots, and human-robot team interaction in particular. Each year, NIFTi evaluates its systems together with several USAR organizations. Rescue personnel teams up with NIFTi robots to carry out realistic missions, in real-life training areas.

RECONASShttp://www.reconass.eu/
RECONASS is a European 7th Framework project funded under the SEC programme (grant agreement no. 312718). The RECONASS project will developa monitoring system for constructed facilities that will provide a near real time, reliable, and continuously updated assessment of the structural condition of the monitored facilities after a disaster, with enough detail to be useful for early and full recovery planning. The above assessment will be seamlessly integrated with automated, near real-time and continuously updated assessment of physical damage, loss of functionality, direct economic loss and needs of the monitored facilities and will provide the required input for the prioritization of their repair.

Robocup Rescuehttp://www.robocup.org
Disaster rescue is one of the most serious social issue which involves very large numbers of heterogeneous agents in the hostile environment. The intention of the RoboCupRescue project is to promote research and development in this socially significant domain at various levels involving multi-agent team work coordination, physical robotic agents for search and rescue, information infrastructures, personal digital assistants, a standard simulator and decision support systems, evaluation benchmarks for rescue strategies and robotic systems that are all integrated into a comprehensive systems in future.

SHERPAhttp://www.sherpa-project.eu/sherpa/
The goal of SHERPA is to develop a mixed ground and aerial robotic platform to support search and rescue activities in a real-world hostile environment like the alpine scenario. The technological platform and the alpine rescuing scenario are the occasion to address a number of research topics about cognition and control pertinent to the call.

Swarmanoid projecthttp://www.swarmanoid.org/
The European consortium composed by the Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE), the Universit’a della Svizzera Italiana (CH), the Ecole Polytechnique Fedederale de Lausanne (CH) and the National Research Council (IT) work jointly in the Swarmanoid project, a heterogeneous robotic swarm made up of three types of robot:hand-bots, foot-bots, and eye-bots. The main scientific objective of this research project is the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system.By clicking on this link you can watch the video presentation of Swarmanoid project, which won the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2011 video competition.